Thursday, June 30, 2011

This Is Cowboy Movie Country! On To Cody, Wyoming

 We left by the East Entrance to Yellowstone. It was a beautiful drive down through the Shoshone Mountains National Forest.

 All of a sudden we were in cowboy country! We were deep in red rock canyon country waiting for John Wayne to ride into view.
The purple wild flowers were frosting on the cake!

So here we are in Cody, Wyoming. We have our rodeo tickets, signed up for a cowboy musical revue. As we sit here writing this, we are listening to a fella playing his guitar and singing two sites down. And he's good!  Oh yeah!

No Time To Blog---Busy Days

We started the day with a stunningly beautiful (and mostly flat) 18 mile bike ride, and then 
we took a 3 mile hike along a babbling brook, which was actually screaming about the snowmelt.
We ended at peaceful Taggert Lake. Well, it was only 3 pm, so we continued down the road (by car) into Jackson, WY. You know, where the rich and famous go.

Lots of galleries of beautiful, expensive, and unusual western art. This Christmas tree is made of Elk horn---- $1200.    There were fossils embedded in rock for up to $100,000.00 
We had to have a beer in the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar. The entire bar top is embedded with real silver dollars. Yee Haa!  We went to the Snake River Brewery for dinner and then went home and collapsed.


The next day we hiked 9 miles round trip to Hermitage Point on Jackson Lake. Very pretty, and pretty hot.
A view along the hike...

We took an early evening boat cruise on Jackson Lake, which the narrator said is rising 10 inches a day from the snow melt! This lake is 85 square miles---a lot of snow melt!  The narrator also told us that two weeks ago 3 skiers spent 8 hours climbing the glacier 2000 feet up to the snow chute at the top between the two horns at the top. They skied down the 60 degree slope (!) in 20 minutes.
 This time we went to dinner at the nearby restaurant and went home and collapsed-again.
This vacationing is exhausting!!!

Close encounters of the 4th kind!

We've had practice from increasingly close encounters ourselves. Don't try this at home.

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Today's Adventures Include Water Fairy Houses, A Grizzly, And A Herd Of Bison!

 Addi, Kaia, and Tess  this waterfall is called Fairy Falls, and it is the tallest one at Yellowstone. Can you see the houses of the water fairies? The fairies look like water sparkles.

 We cross the Continental Divide several times a day. We decided to use the timer on the camera to take a picture. Guess who parked too far away?

Shortly after this picture we stopped where a crowd of people were looking over a bridge. Joy saw a BIG Grizzly bear. But it went behind the trees before we could get a picture. (This sounds like the fish that got away but honest, it's true!)


 We went for a bike ride down a wide gravel path. We came to a clearing where a big herd of bison were on both sides of the path including very close to it. Talk about feeling vulnerable! We  were afraid to turn around, so we rode steady through the herd. One bull honestly pawed the ground. The best part was then we had to ride back through the herd to get back. The bison are so far away because we didn't want to stop to near them. (Wimps)

 These piles of logs are everywhere. They are left from a forest fire. The climate is so dry they don't rot. They just lay there until the next fire.
 These two haven't fallen over yet. The black is burned bark.


 Yellowstone's winter snow is just now melting. Most rivers are very high, many are raging torrents.
The more corners they turn the faster they run.

Off to the Grand Tetons first thing tomorrow morning. No campground reservations! (Joy and Gary living on the edge.)

As The Beatles Said, "Good Day, Sunshine..."

We had another great day at Yellowstone!  Sunshine, best of all!  
  
We thought we had seen all there was to see of geothermal things, but not really. This very large park has hot springs, steam vents, and geysers everywhere!


This one is a bubbling mud pool. The orange mounds toss mud about 18 inches up in the air in a totally random way. Looks like there should be music playing along with it.
Why is that little Christmas tree happily growing in the middle of this super hot mineral mud?


We saw streams of steaming water flowing everywhere.


This geothermal hole is in the lakebed of Lake Yellowstone. The water above these things is sometimes simmering!. Apparently there are lots of underwater geothermal vents.


Friday night was date night. We went to the Old Faithful Inn for a romantic dinner (thanks Greg and Bonnye for the gift certificate!) We started with drinks on the balcony overlooking Old Faithful, which is steaming in the background.


We went in for dinner to the main dining room of this grand national park lodge. Look at the etched glass windows!


Rustic stair rail made of tree trunks and limbs... Joy thinks they look like worms... Oh well, I guess you won't see this at 437 River Rd.

 Dinner was wonderful. Joy had trout. I had osco bucco. Since it was the Old Faithful Inn, we went back up to the balcony to catch one more eruption of the geyser.



On the way back to our campground we had to wait for a herd of elk to cross the road.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Yellowstone Really Does Defy All Description!

The variety of breathtaking sights!     Lake Yellowstone is an inland sea.
 The yellowstone river has created a canyon called "Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone".

 The geology is a major part of the story. Yellowstone was once a gigantic volcano. An early eruption left a depression 34 miles by 44 miles across. The current area is supposed to be the largest geothermally active area any where in the world.

The picture below shows two vertically stripped areas of fractured lava from different eruptions. These are separated by layers of gravel and sedimentary rock in between from inland seas and glacier deposits.
 The picture below is a forrest after steam began to cook the ground and the tree roots.
 Everywhere these happy tourists looked there are more amazing vistas.
 Seeing wildlife is one of the biggest thrills. There are signs everywhere saying to stay 100 ft from the dangerous animals. Today we saw bison

 Elk grazing
Pronghorn antelope
 Plus  two bear cubs (viewed from our car this time), a family of mountain goats, and a cayote.

The rains have started wildflowers blooming
 This is an immense mineral buildup at Mammoth Hot Springs

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

The Proper Temperature To Drink Red Wine

The best way to drink Australian shiraz is cooled in a snowbank at your 8000 ft altitude campground in Yellowstone park. Celebrating an entire day of sunshine!
We are in Yellowstone, so you know where we went first.
It went right on time too. We watched with a few other tourists.
You might recognize the Old Faithful Inn in the background. It is amazing!
 The Old Faithful Inn was built in 1903. At 75 feet high inside, it is one of the largest log structures in existence. The stone fireplace contains 500 tons of stone. Notice the use of rustic design in the trees and braces used to support the balconies. We're going to eat dinner there on friday.

The yellowstone area has wonderously colorful hot springs.
Did I mention who walked down the road ahead of us at one mile per hour???

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Mystery On A Rainy Day

It was raining again. So what's new. The grizzled Park Ranger said, "You can hike today if you're determined, but I'd stay away from Hatchet Mountain in weather like this. People don't like to tell about what they see in those mists."
 We hiked closer and found a stream running 2000 ft down the near vertical slope.
 As we approached the top, a forbidding world emerged from the clouds.
Climbing into that invisible world was not as frightening as what we saw there. Branches were ripped off trees. Limbs were broken off.
 Some trees were snapped like match sticks!
Then we saw something we couldn't explain. 
 The hair on my neck stood up. We felt like we were being watched. I spun around and snapped a quick picture before a large upright creature vanished into the trees.

 You be the judge. We won't even admit that we went to "Hatchet Mountain".